Waiting to Die

(The
coming, unstoppable, pandemic.)

by

James
W. Nelson

Copyright
2012 by James W. Nelson

Smashwords
Edition

Dedicated to everyone who has lost a loved one.

Since the 1918-1919 influenza that killed over 50 million people,
humankind has feared return of the pandemic, an extraordinarily
mutated virus. It’s here. As before, with the Spanish Flu, mostly
healthy young adults are dying, so many that hospitals can no longer
provide for them. Derek Whitfield, 25-year Army vet, has volunteered
for end-of-life hospice care. He sees nothing but darkness waiting on
The Other Side, until he meets Susannah Brite, his
forty-second client.

“She’s
resting quietly,” the kind-looking, white-haired lady said, “For
a while I thought she might be in pain, but, well, she usually claims
to have no pain." She pointed, "First door on your left.”

Derek
Whitfield nodded but didn’t smile. He had not had a female client
yet, and did not look forward to this one with too much happiness.
He stopped outside the hospice room and stared at the patient’s
name. Susannah Brite, just black letters scribbled on white
cardboard and taped to the wall. The patients were no longer getting
top notch care. Basic care, yes. Food. Water. Bathing…sometimes.

The
care-giving lady who answered his knock at this house seemed very
nice, and probably was giving excellent care. Not the case with most
of his clients, least not excellent care. There were just too many
sick people, and the victims were the age-group who should have been
providing the care. Twenties and thirties, nineteen being the
youngest yet to die, thirty-nine the oldest, with the most by far
being between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. People over
forty—it was reasoned—had maybe experienced enough viruses in
their lives that they simply had built up a natural immunity. At
least it was hoped that reasoning was true, and that simple.

The
possibility remained, of course, that, like the Spanish Flu, the
virus was killing through a cytokine storm,
the overreaction of the body's immune system. Derek didn’t pay
much attention to scientific words and theories, but he did read
short articles that appeared in his newspaper. He understood that
with the storm
the strong immune system reactions of young adults ravaged the body,
whereas the weaker immune systems of children were resulting in no
deaths, yet, and
middle-aged adults were resulting in far fewer deaths.
Research worldwide was moving at a blinding pace, but the virus
continued to mutate, quickly, sometimes changing from victim to
victim, and continued to attack the brightest of the bright young
minds. Why the very young people weren’t dying the scientific
community continued to have no clue.

But
even with the shortage of professionals there was one stage of the
sickness that got the best of care: The end of life, which usually
lasted just one day, sometimes only hours. The signal of the end was
the beginning of a lowering blood-pressure and a slight rise in body
temperature: Shallow respirations, officially. Another term
Derek had come to know. End-of-life care could be given by just
about anyone, so the word went out for volunteers: Age fourteen and
above, no particular qualifications. Medical establishments soon had
a list—though not a large one—of local volunteers. So when
shallow respirations began, volunteers were usually called in the
order their names appeared on the lists.

Derek
Whitfield, age sixty-four, twenty-five-year Army veteran, qualified.
It took him a long time to volunteer, seven months into the
world-wide outbreak, long after the experts had deemed the face masks
useless. Most volunteers kept wearing them anyway, but Derek
refused. He considered the masks an insult to the victims. “Just
be there for their end…,” he was told. Somehow that
seemed…useless. What difference could it make? They were dying.
Most, after their week or so of suffering, probably just wanted to
get it over with. His attitude wasn’t great, but he did
think that what he was doing was important. And he did think
most of his clients appreciated his presence.

****

Susannah
Brite would be his forty-second client. Derek had requested only
young men, and—until then—had gotten only young men. He had
thought they would be easier. They weren’t. Some went out like
men of honor: Stoic and at attention. Most went out not quite like
that. Some even went out crying. Dying was dying, and nobody
actually knew what waited on The Other Side, if anything.
Derek was pretty sure nothing but blackness waited, but of course he
never suggested that to anyone. “Just hold their hand,”
he was also told, “Kiss their forehead, or their cheek, if you
want, if you think they want,” and, most importantly, “Have
a soothing voice.”

That
all had seemed easy enough. He hoped this woman would be that easy,
and just one more number to him.

He
raised his hand to knock. Usually nobody answered. The patient was
usually alone when he arrived. Quite often not even family was
available. In the new millennium families often were separated by
thousands of miles, and often even lived on different continents.
Very likely, when some young person got sick they didn’t even have
time to get home. And as more and more people died the travel
industry soon became…less then efficient.

But
at least everybody usually got a private room. When the hospitals
filled, and the patient was determined to have that specific killer
virus, he or she was immediately shipped to a private home. Large
homes, once housing mostly university students, were used first, but
they soon filled too. So any private home and even business places
came to be used, if the owner could guarantee even the minimum basic
care.

His eyes closed. He released a breath, his fists tightened. He had
about reached his limit for this unhappy business, he wasn’t sure
he could even face this young woman. He didn’t know why he
had finally agreed to even see a woman. A
twenty-nine-year-old woman who should be in the absolute prime of her
life, but instead was dying of a disease that science had yet been
unable to control. Except for pain. Painkillers still worked, and
the victims nearly always died before their body built up a tolerance
to the painkilling drug. Even though bedridden and very weak, the
victims spent their last days in somewhat a state of euphoria.

A
good thing—if anything about the disease could be called good—there
was no disfiguring at the end, no oozing of sores or bleeding like in
the movies, just organ failure, of all the major organs. So once
that started the end came quickly.

His
hand still raised to knock, he pulled it back to his forehead and
squeezed his temples, and let out another breath. It was the sort of
uncontrollable shallow breathing that he had experienced so many
times in his life, always just before some dangerous activity, like
waiting his turn to parachute, or waiting for a deadly storm to run
its course, or drawing that first bead on an approaching enemy
soldier, a man he was soon to kill, if the man didn’t kill him
first.

But
approaching these sick people was not dangerous. Breathing should
have been normal. Physically, of course, they couldn’t hurt him,
but they always tried to break his heart. None did, but they all
tried.

Very
gently, he knocked, and released yet another very shallow breath.

No
answer. The door was already open about a foot. He pushed it open
further and, with one step, crossed that gaping chasm. And saw her,
and released one last breath.

Her
eyes were closed. Her face was pale. He imagined her cheeks being
usually rosy, blending with the tiny freckles gracing both sides of
her face and disappearing into that rich-looking, dark brunette
hair…that appeared to be freshly washed and curled. She must be
getting really good hospice care here. At least three pillows
propped her up. Hospital beds for everyone were out-of-the-question,
but pillows were cheap.

She
lay a bit outstretched, her right arm straight and close to her body,
her left arm bent at the elbow and kind of reaching, has she been
in pain? He wondered.

He
took three quiet steps to her bedside. Her eyes opened. Her mouth,
slightly open, opened, slightly more. She licked her lips, once on
the upper lip, once on the lower, but no words came. Her eyes closed
again.

“Susannah,
I’m Derek.” He waited, “I’m here to spend some time with
you…, if you would like that….”

Her
eyes opened again. Her left hand raised, slightly, and toward him,
“Yes, I would,” she said. He barely heard but he knew what she
had said. They all said the same thing, and he always said
the same thing. He put his left hand under her left hand, and felt
her grip him with a strength that surprised him. The strength
though, was short-lived, but the grip itself remained. Without even
thinking about it, he lifted her hand and leaned down, and pressed
her hand against his cheek.

For
a few seconds she gripped his hand tighter again, “Thank you,
Derek.”